


promise me

by miss_tatiana



Category: Pilgrimage (2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fix-It, Post-Canon, after this film i just needed to have one nice thing, and give it a happy ending, it goes from angst in the first half to fluff in the second half Real quick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 04:03:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13286592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_tatiana/pseuds/miss_tatiana
Summary: Too suddenly, Diarmuid was alone in the boat. There were no enemies to run from, no authority to answer to. The relic was gone. Geraldus was gone. He was being asked where to go and he had no answer and there had to be something else he could do. But on the beach, surrounded by carnage, the mute was kneeling. He was still alive. Diarmuid looked up at the sky. This had to be a miracle, but the relic had sunken. What brought it then he did not know. Then he looked to the oarsman, shortly, and then back to the beach, and he jumped out of the boat.





	promise me

**Author's Note:**

> yall like a fix it?????? because basically this is what this is. its rare when you get a film that you can write a fix it and play it off as the actual ending because the real film doesNT HAVE AN ENDING, but this is what this is. in a better world the pilgrimage writers would have given me this.  
> so basically the driving force of the film for me was diarmuid's relationship with the mute and i wanted to go further into that! enjoy

Too suddenly, Diarmuid was alone in the boat. There were no enemies to run from, no authority to answer to. The relic was gone. Geraldus was gone. He was being asked where to go and he had no answer and there had to be something else he could do. He had no purpose in Rome without the relic. He wouldn’t survive the journey back to the monastery in Ireland on his own. 

The forest and the water were silent, and he could barely feel the rocking of the boat. He looked to the shore, where De-Merville lay dead, and the Mute laid- no. No, the mute was kneeling. He was still alive.

Diarmuid looked up at the sky. This had to be a miracle, but the relic had sunken. What brought it then he did not know. Then he looked to the oarsman, shortly, and then back to the beach, and he jumped out of the boat. 

He couldn’t swim. He made it back to shore strictly on his own refusal to give up, and pulled himself out of the water, coughing. Sand covered the knees of his habit, and he hauled himself to his feet, the weight of his wet garments throwing him off balance and the weariness in his legs threatening to let him collapse. 

He stumbled towards the Mute, only hearing his own ragged breathing and the crunch of sand beneath his feet. He was almost there when the Mute keeled over onto his back. 

“No,” breathed Diarmuid, letting himself fall to his knees beside the Mute, the sand and water so reflecting the first time he found him. “Sit up.” He laid a hand on the Mute’s shoulder, refusing to look at the barb still jabbed into the man’s flesh. 

The Mute’s eyes were closed, and Diarmuid couldn’t hear him breathing - if he was still breathing at all - over the sound of his own heart in his ears. 

After everything he had seen and lost, this was what finally broke him. Tears began to pour down his face, and he put a shaking hand to the Mute’s forehead. “You can’t go,” he whispered, and for the first time, there was no comfort for him in speaking his native tongue. “You can’t go, I need you.” 

The Mute’s face was splattered with De-Merville’s blood, and the blood of his men. His lips were parted, like he still held something he needed to say. 

Diarmuid looked around. The forest was lifeless. The bodies of soldiers surrounded him. The oarsman had rowed off. He was truly alone for the first time in his life. “Wake up,” he begged, focusing back on the Mute. “Wake up, you aren’t finished yet.” 

Geraldus had driven the Mute to his death. He was the one who insisted the Mute had to keep fighting, who told him he hadn’t absolved himself yet. He convinced the Mute that he owed God. He was lying. 

“I need you! You need to protect me!” Diarmuid cried. He hit the Mute’s shoulder, and instantly regretted it. “You need to protect me.” His words trailed off into sobs, and he leaned forwards, laying his head on the Mute’s chest. 

He slowly heard the sounds of the world creep back to reality, the gentle fall of the water on sand and the whispers of the wind through the trees. 

“You didn’t have to fight for us,” he murmured into the Mute’s chest, his voice breaking. “You already worked off your sins, you didn’t have to-” He took a deep breath and tried to recall words for a funeral. He couldn’t think. “You’re absolved of anything you did and anything you thought about doing, and you are forgiven. You don’t have to fight anymore.” 

He could hear birdsong, now, and the rustles of animals in the undergrowth near the beach, and a slow, laboured breath. 

He sat up, looking down at the Mute. “How… you’re…” He wiped his face and held a handful of dry sand to the Mute’s lips. Surely enough, the grains moved. Slowly and weakly, but they moved. 

Diarmuid dropped the sand and got to his feet, going between the bodies of the soldiers until he found a sharp enough knife on one of them, attempting to remember everything the monks taught him about healing back at the monastery. 

He tried to stop his hands from shaking as he made incisions around the ugly weapon in the Mute’s body, and he said a prayer before beginning to slowly pull the barb out, millimeter by millimeter. He went as gradually and as gingerly as he could, and when it was finally out he cast it aside and ran to the water to scoop some up and sterilize the wound. He let the seawater drip from between his fingers and over the Mute’s torso. 

Then he pulled strings from his habit, and took a needle from his messenger bag. It was a course needle, thick, made for leatherwork and repair, not for stitching wounds, but it was all he had. He tried not to wince or look away as he pushed it again and again through the tender skin around the wound, and pulled the thread as tight as he dared. Evening fell.

* * *

 

The Mute slept for a week and three days, which consisted of Diarmuid dragging him or trying to carry him from place to secluded place in an attempt to avoid discovery by the soldiers who would surely return to the beach to avenge De-Merville. Slowly, Diarmuid was trying to make his way back through the woods and to the monastery, a task that seemed so distant it was futile. 

When the sun set on the tenth day, the Mute’s eyes ventured open, and were met with the warm light of a fire. His lips were cracked and his throat was parched, a dull ache was throbbing through his torso. He looked down, saw a makeshift dressing tied around his waist. He looked up, and saw Diarmuid drop the armful of wood he’d been carrying and rush around the fire to kneel next to him. 

“You’re awake!” Diarmuid exclaimed, and he leaned his forehead against the Mute’s for a moment in silence, as a greeting. Then he picked up a waterskin from by the fire and gave it to the Mute. “You must be thirsty. Are you alright? How do you feel? Do you need something to eat?”

The Mute slowly let himself come back to reality. He had not thought in some time, so he thought. He thought about De-Merville, about the fight and Geraldus’ words that had pushed him towards it. He thought about how Geraldus wasn’t really the reason he’d gone into that fight knowing he wouldn’t come out of it. He had not drunk in some time, so he drank. He drank all the water Diarmuid would let him have, and then listened to him spout a lecture vaguely based in fact about how you had to eat and drink small amounts at first, and then build yourself back up. He had not smiled in more than some time, so he smiled.

He seldom smiled, even back at the monastery, but it made him feel more human, which he needed now. He smiled at everything. At the fire, at the stars, and the forest around them, at the shocking distance Diarmuid had been able to move him, at Diarmuid. 

And Diarmuid smiled back, of course. He went on about everything that had happened at the beach, trying to describe it to the Mute in the most detail, working around the parts he had blacked out of his memory. “I thought,” he confessed, “I thought for a- for too long, that you had passed. I lost faith in you, and I’m sorry.” He looked at the Mute through the fire. “I’ll never do that again. I promise.” 

The Mute reached around the fire, holding out a hand. 

Diarmuid took it. “You probably already know this, but Geraldus-” He stopped, closing his eyes for a moment. “When Geraldus told you- he made you fight De-Merville-” He sighed shortly. “You didn’t need to prove yourself any more than you already had. He was lying to you. God would never make you do something like that, even to protect His servants, or the relic. You didn’t need to fight for Geraldus. You need to understand that.” 

The Mute shook his head. It was not for Geraldus. 

“What don’t you understand? You don’t owe your faith anything,” Diarmuid told him, tucked into his habit against the wind. 

The Mute nodded, yes, he knew that. There was no easy way to convey what he was trying to let Diarmuid know, so he gave him a look that said to leave it. 

“Alright.” Diarmuid let go of the Mute’s hand and leaned closer to the fire, trying to get a little more warmth. “You rest. Sleep. That’s how you’ll get better. I’ll stay up and sit watch.” 

That idea didn’t sit well with the Mute. If he was asleep, he would be useless, and Diarmuid already looked exhausted. There wasn’t a way to change the boy’s mind, though, so he settled. He began to pull off his shirt to give to Diarmuid as an extra layer. 

“No, don’t-” Diarmuid leaned over and put a hand on the Mute’s arm, stilling him. “You need that. I’m fine. Don’t put your arms over your head, you could tear your wound back open. And keep all your layers on, you might get sick if you don’t.”

The Mute glared at him. The last thing he needed was to be babied. 

“You can’t look at me like that,” Diarmuid said firmly. “You’ve kept me alive ever since we left the monastery. I need to keep you alive now. Neither of us will make it back home without each other, so we have to look after one another, yes?”

The Mute nodded, and pulled Diarmuid close to him, wrapping his arms around the boy. This was the only way he could thank him for saving his life, which he realized, although Diarmuid had skated around it in his descriptions of what happened, was how he made it off the beach. 

Diarmuid kept trying to pull away, nervous that he would put pressure on the Mute’s wound, but he let himself be held, just for a moment, and he felt secure for the first time in a long time. He let out a breath, sat up on his own, and put his hands to the Mute’s face, leaning their foreheads together again. “You have to keep yourself safe, not just me,” Diarmuid said softly. “Will you promise to do that?”

The Mute looked into Diarmuid’s eyes, hand on the boy’s shoulder. 

“Please, tell me you’ll take care of yourself.” Diarmuid looked solemn, and urgent. “I need you, and I need you to be better.” 

With a sigh, the Mute took Diarmuid’s hands from his face and cradled them in his own for a moment before preparing to lie down by the fire. 

“Thank you.” Diarmuid was relieved. He knew that there was a long journey ahead, a near impossible journey, but one they could make if they continued to do what they had always done since the first day they met, when he was fifteen and scared of a body in a boat, and taken care of each other. 

He made sure the Mute had really fallen asleep, and then he turned his gaze outwards, to the forest around the little fire he’d built. Wind rattled the trees and chilled his bones, prompting him to draw his habit tighter around himself. These were Godless lands, filled with undeserved death. It would take time to reach the monastery. However, in the midst of the corrupted inhabitants of the forest, both the clans that had turned to darker Pagan deities to sustain them and the false Christians in the Normand encampments, there had been a miracle that day on the beach. 

Diarmuid knew it wasn’t by his hand alone that the Mute was saved. He had been thankful for it every morning and every night in his prayers. It let him know that even in a forsaken place, there was still faith, and there was still reverence. And more than that, he wouldn’t be alone. The first cycle he went through with the Mute started on a beach, and Diarmuid dedicated the next few weeks to fixing him up, and the years after that defending him to those who mocked him. The Mute viciously protected Diarmuid in return. But a new cycle had just begun, he could feel it. It started on a different beach, a different ailment dragging the Mute down, but he was sure it would progress the same way as the last, with them growing closer and coming to a fuller understanding of each other as people. If there was anything that could keep him going long enough to finish the journey back home it was the promise of that learning, that knowing. 

This miracle was not errant, it was purposeful, and Diarmuid would not let it go to waste.

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos appreciated! tell me what you thought!


End file.
